OKEECHOBEE — Anyone with access to social media has probably run across the phrase “Bring bullying back” in the many comment sections of posts they engage with across the web. The truth of the matter is that bullying never left and many residents of Okeechobee know this from first-hand experience.

Recently Lake Okeechobee News created a Facebook post asking parents and children if they had experienced bullying and wanted to share their story.

One concerned mother who will be referred to as Jane to protect her family’s privacy, reached out to share her son’s experience with bullying.

“My son was always different from the other children.” Jane said. “He was very intelligent and didn’t want anything to do with girls or baseball or sports of any kind.”

She explained that he had been picked on a little during his time at Seminole Elementary, but it got much worse when he began attending Yearling Middle School.

“It started in the sixth grade where the kids would pick on him so bad that he would come home crying that he didn’t want to go to school anymore,” she explained. “Several times between sixth and eighth grade, there were several instances where kids would be poking him with pencils. One time, they took his backpack and dumped everything out of his backpack in between switching classes, and nobody saw anything.”

According to Jane, the bullying didn’t stop when he eventually progressed to ninth grade at the Okeechobee Freshman Campus and continued when he began attending Okeechobee High School in the tenth grade. Ultimately, she chose to remove her son from public school altogether and homeschool him.

“He is now 19 years old,” she said. “And still suffers the emotional trauma that he encountered through his whole school tenure. He’s very reserved on who he talks to and who he trusts. Okeechobee definitely has a bullying problem.”

Jane’s son isn’t the only child in Okeechobee who must deal with being bullied every day. Another individual contacted Lake Okeechobee News via email in response to the Facebook post. While they wanted to share their story, they said they were afraid their bullies might read it and make things worse. Even though they were assured that their privacy would be protected, they didn’t respond again.

Assistant Superintendent of Administrative Services for Okeechobee Schools Dr. Joseph Stanley reports that the district investigated 109 reports of bullying in the 2025-2026 school year alone.

The most recent data from the Florida Department of Education School Environmental Safety Report (SESIR) only shows seven incidents of bullying for the 2024-2025 school year. These incidents include three at Yearling Middle School, three at Central Elementary School, and one at Everglades Elementary School.

Seven sounds like a fairly low number, and there is a reason for that. In Florida, “Bullying” has a very specific legal definition. It must be systematic and chronic – repeatedly and causing physical or emotional harm. Many instances of bullying are logged as harassment or threat/intimidation instead. This means the numbers could be much higher than what FDE data indicates.

Another important gap to note is that FDE numbers only include bullying that happened on school grounds, on a school bus, or at a school-sponsored event. Bullying that happens in community youth sports — such as Little League, travel ball, Okeechobee Youth Football, or recreation leagues — is not tracked in the FDE system at all. Those reports go to the league board, and if serious, to the Okeechobee County Sheriff's Office or the U.S. Center for SafeSport.

According to the most recent Youth Substance Abuse Survey conducted by the Department of Children and Families in 2024, 29.9% of students surveyed in Okeechobee reported being kicked or shoved and 52.7 percent reported being taunted or teased. Another 25.4% reported being victim to cyber bullying.

Table from 2024 Youth Substance Abuse Survey conducted by Florida Department of Children and Families.

With more than half of the students surveyed reporting verbal abuse and more than a quarter reporting physical abuse, it seems pretty clear that bullying remains an ongoing problem for youth in the community.

* Director of Special Programs at Our Village Okeechobee David Hull, MS. contributed to this story.